


Half a Demon, Half a Date

by brightephemera



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, First Dates, Holding Hands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-06
Updated: 2018-02-06
Packaged: 2019-03-14 11:27:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13589082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightephemera/pseuds/brightephemera
Summary: What if Cordelia and Doyle got that dinner? Just one date, between the big things.





	Half a Demon, Half a Date

Cordelia Chase's name belonged in lights, big enough for other planets to see. But Allen Francis Doyle dreaded the day when the world realized it and took her away from the crowded little office where she did something as relatively petty as saving people.

He picked up Angel's car there. Doyle's car wasn't fit for a first date. The garbage could come out but the stains never would. So, loaner it was.

The sun was blurring down between buildings when he reached Cordelia's apartment. On a scale from one to buying a entirely new wardrobe to look less...what was it, short and poor?...he had stayed closer to one, reasoning that his current clothes had been enough to get him this far and if he was going to bankrupt himself it'd be better spent on her, not him.

He knocked. The door peevishly knocked back. “Dennis!” Cordelia yelled from within. “Just a minute.”

Then the door opened. She was in something that left her collarbone and shoulders and arms dreamily bare. It was black and strapless and...

"Cordelia. You look stunning." And... “Wait a minute, isn't that exactly what you wore to that date with that financier?”

“What are you talking...oh.” She frowned. “Of course not. This one was much cheaper. I thought you would be more comfortable that way.”

“Thanks, I think.” Her smile hit harder than her words in any case. He jerked his head back toward the car. It earned a really? Look from Cordelia but mercifully she didn't say it. Either she was in a really good mood or she couldn't pick which one-liner to use.

The restaurant was uncomfortably high in nearly every sense of the word and Cordelia beamed once they were inside. “You know Reese Witherspoon loves this place.”

“You don't say?” He mostly liked it because the staff had been willing to coach him through the wine menu in advance. The preparation made ordering less frightening.

“So,” Cordelia said brightly, “half demon. Your whole life?”

“More or less. I didn't know until I was an adult.”

“So, what, awkward wakeup one morning?” Her lovely mouth twitched. “It wasn't because you had sex, is it? That never ends well.”

“No, I got that out of the way well in advance.” He'd had a life. “Finding out about my father was the tipping point. That's when I learned to switch.” When the world he'd been trying to improve one student at a time stopped making sense… “So, Sunnydale. Nasty piece of work by all accounts.”

She looked straight past the misdirection. “That bad, huh?”

He spread his hands vaguely. “I spent three weeks just going to demon haunts and scrapping. It was novel, I never could've taken that in human form. And...”

“And you were hoping it could knock the demon out of you.”

Transparent didn't mean stupid. It was her gift. Just the same, he looked away when he nodded.

“If that worked,” she said, “there would be a lot more people running around. But they would all be badly concussed.”

He laughed. “I got over that.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “Are you sure?”

Ouch. “Do you prep these barbs in advance, or do they just come to you?”

“We can't all get our ideas from visions.” She did this thing where she cocked her head and her eyes just sparkled. “Hey. Did you ever have a vision of me?”

“You, in trouble? You'd take it out yourself. I never had to get involved.”

She tilted her head further, letting a lock free from her updo to brush her neck. He hadn’t envied anything so much in his life, except maybe the rest of her dress. “I think...it's nice you did.”

A vision? No. Nothing had prepared him for knowing her.

The headache spiked right before the visuals came. He did his best not to fall out of his chair while the images, color, smell, hammered inside his head: person, place, danger. He heard her voice, too, somewhere. He hated not understanding the words in times like this.

His vision cleared. “We need to go,” he said miserably.

“Hold up,” ordered Cordelia. She reached across to take his hand, and unlike the rare and partly accidental times when they reached for the same pen, she didn't shy away. “Are you okay? Are you ever okay after these?”

He looked at her hand. It was smooth, feverish. “It's getting better.”

She smiled. “All right. Let's pay and go.”

“Pay. Right.” He pulled out twenties, thinking longingly of all the beer they could buy. He would have loved to get change, but there was no time.

She took his hand again, voluntarily, in public, as they rushed for the door. It was ludicrously wholesome. Maybe it was a down payment on future contact. Or maybe, for once in his life, it wasn't a loan at all.


End file.
